Day 34 (April 22): Hurray for the Riff Raff - Pa'lante

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator Album Review | PitchforkPsst. Secret. I'm endeavouring to only include music on this blog that I like, or, at the very least, music that interests me. Honest. The thing is that I am trying to do 365 days of this nightmare experiment, and it'd be kind of boring if I just picked out my favourite 365 songs (I don't even know if I can do that! I tried doing a top 100 playlist on Spotify and it was very stressful).

Today's song of the day, though, is indeed probably something that'd end up on that mythical top 365. Just as a little indulgence. It's "Pa'lante", the penultimate track from Hurray for the Riff Raff's (another one for the weird-but-I-love-it band names book) 2017 album The Navigator.

 "Pa'lante" shoots for the format of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life", so it's kind of a wonder that it actually works at all. But man. This is just so much of music can be in such a compact space, if that makes any sense at all. The emotional range of it! The way in which the vocals remain constant without feeling static! The crazy instrumental complexity! All the sudden shifts that feel just right! The defiant final section that just keeps climbing higher and higher!

'Inspirational' music is so often emptily generalised and impersonal, like one of those indoor fitness classes where some overly pumped-up American instructor keeps yelling to push harder to a blank audience he doesn't know. "Pa'lante" gets there the harder way, but boy, does it hit.

I want to say something dumb to cap this post off, like "this is cinema", but I don't want to ruin a good track. Except that I kind of just did. Ah well. It'll survive.

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